The BIONICLE Wiki:Citations
Parts of this and several templates were taken from Wikitroid. Wikitroid probably took the templates from wikipedia. Cite your sources. Why should you? So people know where you got the info from, and to know that it is official. Information about BIONICLE comes from a variety of sources, so fact and conjecture can be easily mixed. Therefore citations should be used whenever possible. This provides integrity and verifiablility to the articles. Marking as needing citations You can (and should) mark information as needing citations by adding templates. To mark a whole article as needing citations, add to the top of the page. To mark a certain piece of information as needing citations add after the information, in a format like this: First sentence. Sentence containing the information you want checked. Another sentence Note that the template goes after the punctuation ending the sentence in question, but before the spaces separating it from the next sentence. If you instead want to tag a particular word or phrase, place the template immediately after the (last) word (in the phrase) unless punctuation immediately follows it, in which case you would put the template after the punctuation. Both of the templates above add the article to the category Articles needing verification. Of course, when possible, one should find the citation itself instead of just tagging the page/sentence as needing a citation. If something is outright ridiculous, purely speculative, or otherwise blatantly false, just remove it. You won't need to add a citation needed template in that case. How to cite sources Citing sources is actually very easy, here is how to do it. For this step-by-step guide, let's prove Tahu is a Toa. Step 1 In front of the fact you are citing, place tags: Tahu is a Toa.BIONICLE Chronicles #1: Tale of the Toa Step 2 At the bottom of the article create a section called " Sources " or " References ", and type: If done correctly, it will show up like this: Tahu is a Toa.1 Sources 1. ↑ BIONICLE Chronicles #1: Tale of the Toa --- See? It's that simple! Multiple sources for the same fact If more than one official source states the same fact, you could use multiple source tags. Tahu is a Toa.BIONICLE Chronicles #1: Tale of the ToaBIONICLE Issue #1: Six Heroes, One DestinyBIONICLE.com Shows up as: Tahu is a Toa.123 Sources 1. ↑ BIONICLE Chronicles #1: Tale of the Toa 2. ↑ BIONICLE Issue #1: Six Heroes, One Destiny 3. ↑ BIONICLE.com Using the same source, multiple times If the need should arise, one could use the same source to prove numerous facts. Such as the one fact being on the same page as another fact. Tahu is a ToaBIONICLE Chronicles #1, Introduction, Pg. 2 Kopaka is a Toa Lewa is a Toa Gali is a Toa Pohatu is a Toa Onua is a Toa Shows up as: Tahu is a Toa1 Kopaka is a Toa1 Lewa is a Toa1 Gali is a Toa1 Pohatu is a Toa1 Onua is a Toa1 Sources 1.1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 ↑ BIONICLE Chronicles #1, Introduction, Pg. 2 Removing and modifying citations To remove a citation, simply remove the entire reference statement. Note that if you remove the first instance of a citation which is referenced later by its identifier, this will cause an error. Change the next instance of the citation from the "short" version to the "full" version. For example, say you have an article that looks like this: Something. Something more.lol citation Some other stuff. More stuff. Even more stuff! Removing the lol citation citation will make the following "short" citations () output errors. You should either remove all of these or change the next short citation to the "complete" citation. To modify a citation, you simply need to find the "complete" citation and modify the information between the tags (you can't modify a "short" citation, since it merely points back to the "complete" citation). Note that modifying a complete citation will also modify all short citations that point to it. Citation Templates Citation template are pre-made formatting templates that make formatting and standardizing citations easier. You should use these whenever possible instead of just inserting arbitrary text between the tags. Citation template are relatively simple, you just insert the template between the tags. There are several templates, each for a different type of source: *Cite book (for citing books, comics, etc) *Cite news (for citing newspapers) *Cite game (for citing video games) *Cite journal (for citing journals and magazines) *Cite web (for citing websites) Reliable Sources Make sure you use reliable sources. Random internet forums are not reliable (unless Greg Farshtey goes there sometimes, but even then, be careful). Make sure you stick to truly reliable sources. Examples include the books, the comics, the movies, websites run by LEGO, and direct quotes from Greg Farshtey. Information from unreliable sources will be removed. Category:The BIONICLE Wiki Category:Policies